Advice to Lebanese asylum seekers: you're wasting your life

Natalie O'brien

Dozens of Lebanese asylum seekers detained on Nauru and Manus islands will be urged by community leaders to return home voluntarily to avoid spending the ''best years of their life'' locked up in detention.

Lebanese leaders Dr Jamal Rifi, and Sheikh Malek Zeidan, the Australian representative of the Mufti of Lebanon, are travelling to Manus Island and then to Nauru to speak to the detainees and counsel them about their future.

It is unusual for Lebanese citizens to arrive in Australia by boat seeking asylum and Dr Rifi told Fairfax Media he is going to advise them ''not to waste their life in detention and to make the sensible decision to return home to their loved ones''.

''For the first time, we have Lebanese nationals in detention who have been the victims of people smugglers who have duped them with false promises,'' said Dr Rifi who is also on the Minister's Council on Asylum Seekers and Detention and will be on both islands in his official capacity.

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There are 23 Lebanese nationals believed to be on Manus Island and 43 on Nauru, who have come by boat.

It has been reported that people smugglers have been targeting villagers in the north of Lebanon who had been badly affected by the conflict in Syria and the overflow of refugees into their villages.

Their plight was highlighted in September when a boat filled with Lebanese asylum seekers sank off the coast of Java killing 28 men, women and children, many from the same region of Akkar.

About 22 people remain missing, presumed drowned. In the wake of the tragedy, family members revealed they had been promised journeys on luxury vessels and visas on arrival in Australia, along with new lives and jobs.

Dr Rifi said a lot of ''unwary'' Lebanese had fallen victim to the propaganda of the people smugglers who deliberately targeted ''the illiterate, the poor and the people who don't have much contact with the outside world''.

He said he hoped that the Lebanese returning voluntarily will have some impact on other detainees in making sensible decisions, as well as educating others about the realities of coming to Australia by boat.

''There is no point in postponing the inevitable and suffering the physical and mental effects of detention. We don't want them to be damaged goods on their return,'' Dr Rifi said.

He said people returning home voluntarily would help get the word out that if others come to Australia by boat, they stand to lose three things: ''their money, their life and their liberty''.